On the surface, halflings are a jovial, personable race with an affection for music and art. They roam between the nations in traveling caravans, providing music, dance, and selling beautiful crafts to any town they stop in. The shapers used them largely as jesters and entertainment, but the Halfling race carries a dark secret in their blood, [url="http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187762"]a secret hiding in the shadow of their smiles.[/url]

Personality: Halflings are friendly, beautiful people, with warm smiles and a deep appreciation for music and dance. They make fast friends and they have a presence much larger than their size would indicate. Halflings love to be the center of attention, and can often pull it off by merely walking into a room. Halflings love telling tales, singing, and dancing, these things being second nature to them.

Physical Description: Halflings stand about 3 feet tall and usually weigh between 30 and 35 pounds. Their skin ranges from pale to a deep, exotic brown, and their hair comes in shades of red, blonde, brown, and black, almost always black and worn long. They have deep brown, green, or black eyes. Halflings of both genders are extremely beautiful, with gentle features. Halflings tend to favor bright colors and exciting patterns in their clothes. A halfling reaches adulthood at the age of 20 and generally lives into the middle of her second century.

Relations: Halflings try to get along with everyone else. They are adept at fitting into a community of almost any race and making themselves valuable and welcome, with the obvious exception of elves. Even the isolated dwarves will open their gates for a caravan of halflings, though they will be thoroughly checked before they get in. Since human society changes faster than the societies of the longer-lived races, it is human society that most frequently offers halflings opportunities to exploit, and halflings are most often found in or around human lands.

Alignment: Halflings generally tend towards chaos over law, and they show a tendency towards good, though most halflings are solidly neutral.

Halfling Lands: Halflings are nomadic, traveling from place to place, never really settling down. Halflings villages take the form of large caravans 20 or 30 wagons strong, each wagon holding a single family of halflings. Halflings frequent gnomish hospitals, human villages, goliath villages, orc camps, dwarven caves, and shifter cities.

Language: Halflings speak halfling, which is an intricate tongue, incorporating pitch and tempo into it’s grammar. A story told in halfling can be a song all on its own. The language is known for it’s detailed description of musical terms. Halfling poetry is rhymed both on the syllables and the notes. Written halfling syllabic symbols are accompanied by a notation of pitch.

Names: Halfling names are typically three-part, with a first name, a middle name, then a family name. Using a halfling’s middle name is usually reserved for close, personal relationships.

Adventurers: Halfling adventurers are well-respected. Most often these traveling souls are bards, but halflings take on many professions, their natural charisma making them an asset to any group. Most halflings go adventuring to bring back songs and tales from distant lands.

HALFLING RACIAL TRAITS

+2 Charisma, -2 Strength. Halflings are beautiful and compelling, but their size leaves them physically weak.

Small: As a Small creature, a halfling gains a +1 size bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Hide checks, but she uses smaller weapons than Medium characters use, and her lifting and carrying limits are three-quarters of those of a Medium character.

Halfling base land speed is 20 feet

+2 Racial Bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, and Sense Motive Checks. Halflings learn how to read and manipulate people socially at a young age, and their compelling presence makes them naturally talented at it.

+2 racial bonus to listen and perform checks. Halflings have keen ears and fine sense for rhythm and tune, being raised among musicians.

+1 racial bonus to saving throws. Halflings are lucky creatures, which often allows them to escape the worst effects of spells and abilities.

Show Magic: Halflings can use Summon Instrument and Prestidigitation as spell like abilities at will.

The basic thing behind this idea was that there was always fluff to support halflings being really convincing and charismatic, master negotiatoors and diplomats, but there was never any crunch to go with it. So, here we are.